1. Technical Field of the Invention
This invention relates generally to wireless communication and more particularly to wireless communication error checking.
2. Description of the Related Art
As is known, wireless communication devices (e.g., cellular telephones, modems, local area network connections within video systems, etc.) communicate in accordance with one or more wireless communication protocols. One such wireless communication protocol is IEEE 802.11a, which defines a frame format for wireless communication in a wireless local area network (WLAN). As defined, the frame includes a PLCP (Physical Layer Convergence Procedure) preamble, a signal field, and data fields. The signal field is convolutional encoded and includes a rate field, a reserved field, a length field, a parity bit field, and a tail field.
In a wireless communication, the receiving device uses the preamble to acquire and synchronize the incoming frame. Once synchronized, the receiving device uses the signal field to determine information regarding the data fields and to verify, via the parity bit field, that the information of the signal field was received properly. If the parity bit is zero, then it is assumed that the signal field data was received properly and, if the parity bit is one, then it is assumed that the signal field data was not received properly.
The parity bit accurately indicates the validity of the signal field when the signal field (contains no errors or contains an odd number of errors. As is known, a parity check is incremented in a modulo-2 fashion for each error encountered. With only a signal bit parity check, the parity bit is zero when no errors are detected, is one when the first error is detected, is zero when the second error is detected, and so on. Thus, if the signal field includes an even number of errors, the parity check bit will indicate that the signal field is valid, which is incorrect.
Therefore, a need exists for a method and apparatus for improved error checking in a wireless communication frame.